Overview — Übersicht

...nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes...

(Bernard of Chartres, as quoted by John of Salisbury in his Metalogicon)

The metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants is probably the best-known description of mankind advancing its knowledge. This is particularly obvious in the case of computer science: Originating from mathematics, we structure our data using graph theory and control our programs using the laws of logic. We use perception psychology to convey information to human users, study renaissance painters and belle époque photographers to understand optical imaging, and get inspired by biology to create what was once known as "artificial intelligence". Finally, we use such concepts to solve problems from a magnitude of fields such as mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry, and – most importantly in our case – medicine.

This seminar is designed to review and summarize the development in relevant disciplines of science over the past centuries, and to investigate their impact onto our work as computer scientists.

As shown by Leonhard Euler, there is no tour through the city of Königsberg crossing each of the seven bridges only once. This is an early example of graph theory, a foundation for many recent machine learning algorithms.

The artist Albrecht Dürer conducted experiments with perspective drawing. The method of "projecting" objects onto images by using a string is – in a mathematical form – the basis for the pinhole camera model as used in computer graphics and vision.

Requirements — Anforderungen

In this Bachelor Seminar Course (Proseminar), each student is asked to present the history of a certain science, technique or person. In order to successfully complete the seminar, participants are required to:

Present the selected subject to the other participants (30 minutes, followed by a short discussion).

Submit a written report (10 pages content maximum), preferably typeset in LaTeX, and participate in the reviewing process

Attend all seminar sessions and participate.

Each presentation is followed by a discussion and everyone is encouraged to actively participate. The report must include all references used and must be written completely in your own words.

Benefits — Ziele

You will learn/practice to independently conduct a literature search, present a talk to peers, and work with the LaTeX typesetting system. Parallel to this, you will learn about interesting developments in science and gain a broad view of our and related fields.

Submission deadline of preliminary version of your report, in electronic form via e-mail to your supervisorAbgabefrist einer vorläufigen Version der Ausarbeitung, in elektronischer Form per e-Mail an den Betreuer

Assignment of two such reports of fellow students for reviewing, by e-mail from your supervisorZuweisung zweier solcher Ausarbeitungen von Kommilitonen zur Begutachtung, per e-Mail durch den Betreuer

Essay/Talk

Presentation (about 30-45min) followed by a discussion. Essay (10 pages) including all references used. The essay and presentation have to be done in English for Hauptseminars and German or English for Proseminars. The essay must be written in your own words and not by copy and paste.

Various proceedings of conferences in our AR-Lab, 03.13.036 (These proceedings are not for lending!)

Some further hints for working with references:

JabRef is a Java program for comfortable working with Bibtex literature databases. Handy feature: if you know the PubMed ID for an article, JabRef can import data from there (via "Web Search/Medline").

The seminar is designed to review and summarize the development of science over the past centuries. The current achievements in computer science and medicine are based on decades of evolution and development in various disciplines in science.